The Kiss of Deception (19 page)

“Berdi said the cut was no bigger than a fleabite. Mostly a bad scrape.”

“But you’re limping.”

I rubbed my shoulder. “I hurt all over.”

“You fought hard.”

“I had no choice,” I said. I stared at his clothes. He had changed. No trace of a corpse’s blood or the method he used to take care of the body. I was afraid to ask but also afraid not to. “The body?”

“Don’t ask, Lia. It’s done.”

I nodded.

He started to leave, then stopped himself. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” I asked.

“I wish I—” He shook his head. “Just sorry,” he repeated and left down the path. Before I could call after him, I spotted Pauline coming toward the cottage. I ducked back inside, grabbed my bloodied shirt from the floor, and looked for a place to hide it. In our small quarters, that could only mean the wardrobe. I flung open the door and stuffed the shirt into the dark corner, pushing some other things in front of it. I’d retrieve it later to be washed. Pauline had enough worries in her life right now without me adding to them. Among the clutter in the bottom, I spotted the basket Walther had given me. I had been so consumed with the news he had brought that day, I had hastily tucked it away and forgotten it. He’d said he put a morsel in the bottom to tide me over, but surely it was spoiled by now. I imagined more of the lovely fig cheese gone to waste and braced myself for the smell as I pushed aside the napkin covering the bottom. It wasn’t fig cheese.

The door flew open, and I spun to face Pauline.

“What happened to your neck?” she demanded immediately.

“A little tumble down the stairs with some firewood in my arms. Pure clumsiness.”

She slammed the door behind her. “That’s Enzo’s job! Why were you doing it?”

I looked at her, perplexed. It was the most engaged she had been in two weeks. “The laggard wasn’t around today. Every time he comes into a bit of coin, he disappears.”

She started to go on about my bandage, but I stopped her and drew her to the bed to show her the basket. We sat and I noticed her scarf was gone. Her hair was full and honey gold around her shoulders.

“Your mourning scarf,” I said.

“It’s time to move on,” she explained. “I’ve done all I can for my Mikael. Now I have other things that require my attention. And the first thing appears to be
you.
”

I reached out and hugged her, pulling her tightly to me. My chest shook. I tried not to make a display, but I held her long and hard until she finally eased away, cautiously looking me over.

“Is everything all right?”

Weeks of worry poured out of me, my voice shaking. “Oh, Pauline, I missed you so much. You’re all I have. You’re my family now. And you were so pale and grieved. I feared I might never get you back. And then there were the tears and the silence. The silence—” I stopped, pressing my fingers to my lips, trying to force the quiver away. “The silence was the worst of it all. I was afraid when you told me to go away that you blamed me for Mikael.”

She pulled me toward her, holding me, and we both cried. “I’d never blame you for that,” she said. She leaned back so she could look into my eyes. “But grief has a way of its own, Lia. A way I can’t control. I know it’s not over yet, but today at the Sacrista…” She paused, blinking back tears. “Today, I felt something. A flutter inside.
Here.
” She took my hand and pressed it low against her stomach. “I knew it was time for me to prepare for the living.”

Her eyes glistened. Through all the pain, I saw the hope of joy in her eyes. My throat swelled. This was a journey neither of us could have imagined.

I smiled and wiped my cheeks. “There’s something I need to show you,” I said. I put the basket between us and moved aside the napkin, pulling out a fat roll of Morrighan notes—a morsel that was supposed to tide me over for some time to come. My brother would understand. “Walther brought this. It was Mikael’s. He said Mikael left a letter saying it was for you if anything should happen to him.” Pauline reached out and touched the thick roll. “So much from a first-year sentry?”

“He managed his purse well,” I said, knowing any good trait assigned to Mikael would be easily accepted by Pauline.

She sighed, and a sad smile lined her eyes. “That was Mikael. This will help.”

I reached out and held her hand. “We’ll all help, Pauline. Berdi, Gwyneth, and I, we’ll all be here for—”

“Do they know?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Not yet.”

But we both knew, either time would tell them or Pauline would. Some truths refused to be hidden.

        
Tell me again, Ama. About the warmth. Before.

The warmth came, child, from where I don’t know.

My father commanded, and it was there.

        
Was your father a god?

Was he a god? It seemed so.

He looked like a man.

But he was strong beyond reason,

Knowledgeable beyond possible,

Fearless beyond mortal,

Powerful as a—

Let me tell you the story, child, the story of my father.

Once upon a time, there was a man as great as the gods.…

But even the great can tremble with fear.

Even the great can fall.

—The Last Testaments of Gaudrel

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

A pink sugar haze glazed the sky, and the sun began its climb over the mountain. Either side of the road was crowded twenty deep with everyone in Terravin waiting to be led in the procession that would hail the beginning of the holy days. A reverent hum ruffled through the crowd, holiness incarnate, as if the gods stood among us. Maybe they did.

The Festival of Deliverance had begun. In the middle of the road, waiting to lead the crowds, were dozens of women and girls, old and young, hand in hand, dressed in rags.

Every First Daughter of Terravin.

Berdi and Pauline were among them.

It was the same procession my mother had led in Civica—that she would lead there today. The same procession that I had walked in just steps behind my mother because we were the kingdom’s First Daughters, blessed even above the others, holding within us the strongest gift of all.

The same procession, sometimes immense, sometimes attended only by a handful of the faithful, was taking place in towns, hamlets, and villages all over Morrighan. I scanned the faces of the First Daughters lining up, the expectant, the confident, the curious, the resigned—some supposing themselves to have the gift, others knowing they didn’t, some still hoping it might come, but most taking their places in the middle of the road simply because they knew no other way. It was tradition.

The priests made a last call for any other First Daughters to join the rest. Gwyneth stood wedged beside me in the crowd. I heard her sigh. I shook my head.

And then the singing began.

Morrighan’s song rose and fell in gentle humble notes, a plea to the gods for guidance, a chorus of gratitude for their clemency.

We all fell in step behind them, dressed in our own rags, our stomachs rumbling because it was a day of fasting, and we made our way to the Sacrista for holy sacraments, thanksgiving, and prayer.

I thought Rafe and Kaden hadn’t come. Since it was a day of fasting, Berdi hadn’t put out morning fare, and neither of them had stirred from the loft this morning, but just before we reached the Sacrista, I spotted them both in the crowd. So did Gwyneth. Heads were bowed, voices only lifted in song, but she sidled close and whispered, “They’re here,” as if their presence was as miraculous as the gods leading the Remnant from destruction. Maybe it was.

Suddenly Gwyneth surged ahead until she was in step with little Simone and her parents. Simone’s mother’s hair was a sprinkling of salt and pepper, and her father’s was snowy white, both old to be parents of such a young child, but sometimes heaven brought unexpected gifts. Holding Simone’s hand, the woman nodded acknowledgment over her head to Gwyneth, and they all walked together. I noted that even little Simone, always so impeccably dressed when I had seen her on my errands in town, had managed to find rags to wear. And then, walking just a few paces behind them, I noticed for the first time that Simone’s bouncing strawberry curls were only a shade lighter than Gwyneth’s.

We reached the Sacrista, and the crowd spread out. The sanctuary was large but not big enough to hold all of Terravin along with the swell of visitors who had come for the high holy days. The elderly and the First Daughters were invited into the sanctuary, but the rest had to find places on its perimeters, the steps, the plaza, the small grotto court, or the graveyard where additional priests would call rites for all to hear. The crowd thinned, everyone finding a place where they’d spend most of the day in prayer. I hung back, hoping, but I had lost sight of Rafe and Kaden. I finally walked to the graveyard, the last place there was anywhere left to kneel.

I laid my mat down and caught the gaze of the priest on the back steps of the Sacrista. He looked at me,
waiting.
I didn’t know him. I had never met him, but with all the time Pauline had spent at the Sacrista, maybe she had told him something. Even if she had confessed our truths, I knew priests were bound by the seal of silence. He continued to observe me, and once I knelt, he began calling rites, beginning with the story of devastation.

I knew the story. I had it memorized. Everyone did.
Lest we repeat history, the stories shall be passed from father to son, from mother to daughter.
The story was told in every hovel, every cramped cottage, every grand manor, the older passing it on to the younger. Regan liked to tell it to me and often did, though his version was decidedly spicier than Mother’s, with more blood, battles, and wild beasts. Aunt Cloris generously peppered hers with obedience, and Aunt Bernette’s prominently featured the adventure of the deliverance, but it was all essentially the same story and not that different from the one the priest told now.

The Ancients thought themselves only a step lower than the gods, proud in their power over heaven and earth. They controlled night and day with their fingertips; they flew among the heavens; they whispered and their voices boomed over mountaintops; they were angry and the ground shook with fear.…

I tried to concentrate on the story, but when he said the word
fear
, it triggered my own. I saw again the deathly blank stare of a bloody-jointed puppet, the one that had haunted my dreams last night telling me,
Don’t utter another word.
Even in my dreams, I had disobeyed and called out. Silence wasn’t my strong point.

I’d always known the Chancellor and Scholar disliked me, but I never thought they’d send someone to murder me. A bounty hunter was required to bring the accused back to face justice for acts of treason. This was no bounty hunter. He could have taken me back alive to face execution. Was it possible that Father was part of their plan, eager to be quietly done with me once and for all?
Not your own father
, Pauline had said. I wasn’t so sure anymore.

I shook my head, recalling that night I had slinked into the Scholar’s study. Why had I left the note? I knew it would only fuel his fury, but I hadn’t cared. It didn’t bring me joy yesterday to see it clenched in the hand of my attacker, but the gods save me, I had laughed out loud when I wrote it using the Scholar’s own stationery. He’d have known who did it, even if I hadn’t left a note. I was the only possible thief in the citadelle, but I wanted him to realize it was my plan that he should know.

I could just imagine the Chancellor’s face when the Scholar showed the note to him. Even if the books were of no value, by leaving the note, I had raised the ante. Besides fleeing their carefully arranged marriage, I had taunted them. Unthinkable. They were the most powerful people in my father’s cabinet, alongside the Viceregent, but I had showed them both I had little regard for their power or position. Leaving the note gave me some power back. I held something over them. Their secrets weren’t so well hidden now, even if this secret was something as small as an old book they had failed to properly enter into the royal archive.

Last night after Pauline had fallen asleep, I pulled the chair to the wardrobe. Standing on it, I reached over the raised scrolling at the top and felt for the box I had wrapped in cloth. Why I had stored it up there I wasn’t sure. Maybe because the Scholar had hidden it away, I thought I should do the same. These books were not for everyone’s eyes. I took the fragile volumes out and laid them on the table. The lantern cast the already yellowed pages in a warm golden glow.

Both were thin, small books bound in soft embossed leather that showed signs of damage, burn marks on the edges as though they had been tossed in a fire. One was more heavily charred than the other, and its last page was missing almost in its entirety, appearing to have been hastily ripped away, except for a few letters in the upper corner. The other book was written in a strange scrawling style I had never seen before. Neither was similar to any of the dialects of Morrighan that I knew of, but there were many obscure tongues that had died out. I guessed these strange words were one of the lost languages.

I had turned the brittle pages carefully, studying them for an hour, but in spite of my facility for languages, I made no progress. Some words seemed to have the same roots as Morrighese words, but even seeing these similar root words wasn’t enough. I needed a more in-depth key, and the only archive in Terravin was at the Sacrista. I thought I might have to become friendly with the clerics here.

The priest came down the steps, walking among the worshippers, calling out more of the story, his voice strong and ardent.

They coveted knowledge, and no mystery was hidden from them. They grew strong in their knowledge but weak in their wisdom, craving more and still more power, crushing the defenseless.

The gods saw their conceit and the emptiness of their hearts, so they sent the angel Aster to pluck a star from the sky and plunge it to earth, the dust and seas rising so high they choked the unrighteous. But a few were spared—not those strong of body or mind, but those of pure and humble heart.